VersaCourt

When we say that CH3 was born out of necessity, this stems from our relationship with our sister company VersaCourt.

Background

VersaCourt is one of the leading suppliers of plastic court tile systems used in the construction of both residential and commercial basketball, tennis, shuffleboard and multi-sport game courts.

Challenge

VersaCourt utilizes an industry-leading process whereby each court is pre-assembled, painted and checked for quality, flatness and color consistency prior to shipment. The process is primarily used to simplify installation and ensure quality, but it also helped the VersaCourt team identify any small imperfections or fluctuations in color. While these issues could be addressed prior to shipment, doing so required additional assembly time to replace tiles.

VersaCourt outdoor court tile with painted lines.

Solutions

CH3 embarked on a project to completely overhaul the injection molding process.

A gravimetric dosing system replaced the current volumetric dosing system improving the color consistency of each tile and reducing the overuse of expensive colorants.

A move to state-of-the-art electric injection molding presses reduced overall power consumption during the manufacturing process by up to 70% compared with previous hydraulic powered presses.

An innovative closed loop process cooling system was employed that decreased cycle time while greatly reducing energy costs.

All molds were cleaned and adjusted to improve both cycle time and quality.

CH3’s manufacturing process which empowers its team members to focus on quality and continual improvement was employed.

Results

While VersaCourt’s end customers continued to enjoy the same quality courts that they were accustomed to, CH3 was able to achieve nearly perfect color consistency while reducing the overall cost of the tile and eliminating re-work during the initial assembly process.